Is it Expensive?

Is paintball expensive?.

I would say having a child in other sports like skiing, soccer, baseball, karate, track, no.

You should see how much I pay for my daughters dance classes, I cant wait for college so I can save some money.

If cost is a concern, here are some tricks from a frugal parent like myself. Hey, I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, so I HAVE to be!

Paintballs 

There is an expression in paintball called "spray and pray". Its what most first time paintballers will do, they will aimlessly rapid fire their markers in the general direction of the other team, praying to hit someone.

I like to use the term "spray and pay"....because that's the truth.

Remember it only takes 1 paintball to get a hit on a player. And frankly, it takes skill, to use one or two paintballs to hit a player.

Now, we don't like to come up to our kids and yell at them about wasting paint, so I just say to them the longer they make the paint last, the longer they get to stay on the field. Remember, when they run out of paintballs, that's it for the day!

Finally, I have made the personal choice to have my son buy his own paint. I deal with the admission, he deals with the rest. But that's just a personal choice.

Marker aka Gun.

A kid showed up at our field...never played a game in his life..with an Eclipse Geo worth $1300. The problem was when he went to play, he couldn't handle his gear. I saw him one more time and that was it.

The first marker your child uses should never be high end. There are so many great entry level markers that do a good job. Plus there are different styles of playing...woodsball, speedball and pump. Let your child play a while and see what they want to do.

The other thing to note...the accuracy of a shot is about the quality of the paintball - not the marker.

On another personal choice, I helped my son purchase his first marker. After that, the rest was up to him.

He has done an amazing job in trading his marker up. Meaning he found someone who wanted to do a straight trade for a better marker. I find there is a lot of used markers for sale or trade. Craigslist and forums such as M Carter Brown, Tech PB and Paintball Forum are a great place to start.

Mask. 

This is the first thing your child should own. I'm a safety freak, so I refused to buy a used mask, but that's my own personal choice and you don't have to follow my opinion.

One thing I immediately noticed was the cost of the mask was never equal to what was the best.

I found that the fit and having a dual lens is the key. So instead of spending $150 on a fancy mask that didnt fit great but looked awesome, we got a JT Mask that fit better and worked great.

But note, a JT happened to fit my head better, you might find something different for your child. So go try a few on.

And the rest of it.

My child is going to run around on a muddy field and get covered with splattered paintballs and you want me to spend hundreds of dollars on designer paintball clothes. HA!

We got all our stuff used. Even the fancy designer paintball clothes. Hey, thats just me, I hope I have helped put it in prospective.

Share your ideas

If you have any tricks to share on how to keep paintball affordable to your personal budget, please post in the comment section below.